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ABACC > News > President of ESARDA mentions the success of ABACC in these 20 years

President of ESARDA mentions the success of ABACC in these 20 years

The president of ESARDA Dr. Kristóf Horváth, in the openning speech of the annual meeting held on May 2011 in Budapest, said:

“Speaking on the role of our regional safeguards system let me seize the opportunity to welcome the representatives of the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials in our Annual Meeting, abbreviated and known as ABACC. The international organisation set up under the Bilateral Agreement between Brazil and Argentina covering the Exclusively Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy, which entered into force in 1991, celebrates this year its 20th anniversary. During these 20 years the ABACC system had the competence and ability to administer and apply the common SSAC to all nuclear materials in all nuclear activities in Brazil and Argentina with all the challenges raised by various nuclear technologies in the region. Within the quadripartite safeguards agreement with ABACC, Brasil, Argentina and the IAEA a system has been developed where the focus was on to avoid unnecessary duplication of activities but at the same time enabling all parties to draw their independent conclusions. The two regional, ABACC and Euratom systems show similarities in maintaining their independent systems on one hand and respecting and assisting the independent role of the IAEA on the other hand. The effective implementation of thesystems could be realized only through the co-operative working relationship established.

Let me highlight here the long bilateral cooperation between Euratom (including ESARDA) and ABACC regional systems that has resulted in meaningful exchanges of experience both in operating the systems and in performing research and development in verification activities to strengthen their SSAC. I wish a lot of success for the ABACC in their future activities and do really hope that our co-operation will continue to remainon mutual and long term basis”.